Bleeding Kansas, Bleeding Missouri

The Long Civil War on the Border

This multi-faceted study gives readers a more nuanced and comprehensive understanding of the violence that erupted--long before the first shot was fired at Fort Sumter--along the Missouri-Kansas border, by blending the political and military with the social and intellectual history of the populace. The fifteen essays together explain why the divisiveness was so bitter and persisted so long, still influencing attitudes 150 years later.

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Like the book overview summarizes, prior historical scholarship on Kansas and Missouri during the Civil War era tends to focus on either state, but rarely ever both or the region as a whole. This compilation of essays by editors Jonathan Earle and Diane Mutti Burke succeeds in their effort to bridge the gap, highlighting the territorial conflicts that precipitated and/or were the symptoms of the coming Civil War.

Bleeding Kansas, Bleeding Missouri is more scholarly than narrative, which is not surprising given the nature of the publication, but I recommend it anyway for those who want a more careful examination of the region's growing pains in the mid-19th century.